Is the Closet Ever Justified?

SOMETIMES even I get tired of looking at aggregate data, so I asked a psychiatrist in Mississippi who specializes in helping closeted gay men if any of his patients might want to talk to me. One man contacted me. He told me he was a retired professor, in his 60s, married to the same woman for more than 40 years.

About 10 years ago, overwhelmed with stress, he saw the therapist and finally acknowledged his sexuality. He has always known he was attracted to men, he says, but thought that that was normal and something that men hid. Shortly after beginning therapy, he had his first, and only, gay sexual encounter, with a student of his in his late 20s, an experience he describes as “wonderful.”

He and his wife do not have sex. He says that he would feel guilty ever ending his marriage or openly dating a man. He regrets virtually every one of his major life decisions.

The retired professor and his wife will go another night without romantic love, without sex. Despite enormous progress, the persistence of intolerance will cause millions of other Americans to do the same.

So writes Seth Stephens-Davidowitz in The New York Times, in an opinion piece entitled “How Many American Men Are Gay?” (And the answer, culled from Gallup polls, porn sites, Craigslist, and other sources is 5%....)

The article is interesting, but the anecdote above is what fascinates. Start with the guy’s profession—a professor thinks that men are attracted to men but hide it, and that’s normal? A professor? Has this guy ever read any of the research about gender studies in the last 40 years? Has he even turned on a television?

And then his age. A young man in his twenties—OK, I get that. It can be hard to figure it out, hard to come out, though increasingly people are coming out at younger ages. But to get into your sixties and still be so clueless?

So then we come to the fact that he’s had one gay sexual experience, which he calls wonderful. Oh, and he doesn’t have sex with his wife. Surely a professor could put together those two facts and comes to a logical conclusion?

OK—those of us who are out can be logical: we’ve faced our fears, we’ve come out and dealt with the consequences. Even if rejected by friends or family, it’s at least an external rejection, rather than the self-condemnation of the closet.

But those living in the closet are living in a system of fear that requires elaborate scaffolds of denial to support. And as Michelangelo Signorile writes in the Huffington Post, life in the closet leads to two often-disastrous results.

It’s well known in the gay world: the guy waving the biggest anti-gay flag in the parade (as well as heading it) is the most closeted queer. Nor is it just gay people who have noticed this; clinical psychologists will recognize this as reaction formation, defined here by Wikipedia:

In psychoanalytic theory, reaction formation is a defensive process (defense mechanism) in which anxiety-producing or unacceptable emotions and impulses are mastered by exaggeration (hypertrophy) of the directly opposing tendency.[ 

Nor is it just psychoanalysts and gay people—Shakespeare got it, too. Remember “the lady doth protest too much, methinks?”

The second thing that guys in the closet do is to have risky, stupid sex. Part of it, of course, is because they can’t have safe, protected sex. Because if you see me going into a gay bar? Well, you’re not gonna get much horror or moral indignation from my boss, my friends, my family.

So what does Senator X do? He bottles it in until his need for sex is overwhelming, and then he seeks relief in the worst possible ways—hustlers, Craigslist, porn sites. But there’s something worse. He may well turn to those over whom he has some power—a student, an altar boy, an employee. Sound familiar?  

So far, I completely agree with Signorile in his analysis of the dynamics of the closet. But then he writes the following sentence:

While many people are forced to be remain closeted in a society that is still often homophobic, the closet nonetheless should never be seen as a healthy place.

I’ve known few people who didn’t face obstacles—some of them great—to coming out. In fact, in the great majority of cases, gay people create the supportive family and friends from people who were either un-accepting or hostile. Coming out, in fact, is a two-way street—as any devastated parent can tell you. But is it really true that a person is forced to stay in the closet?

Consider the professor cited above—is it really too late for him? Well, men in their 60s do find love and partners; people do change professions late in life; no one has to live in an intolerant state forever.

I generally toe the established line about outing people: I’ll let anyone be in the closet as long as you’re not hurting—by words or actions—other gay people. But I wonder about this belief that the closet might be justified.

“The saddest experience I ever had as a pastor,” said Pablo, “was of a kid of 14 or 15 whose mother went to her Evangelical church and got the message: gay people are possessed by the devil. So she came home and threw her kid out of the house: she didn’t want Satan in her house. And they lived way out in the country, so there he was, miles from town, walking and sobbing down a dark road toward town. Eventually, he ended up with a couple of gay people who tried to take care of him, but the trauma was too great. The kid returned to the streets, and then dropped out of sight.”

We speculated: was he hustling? Was he in a bordello? If so, could he get out, or was he being held? Drugs or drink?

So, should he have stayed in the closet? Certainly looks that way, doesn’t it? But wait—what if he had come out in a different way? What if he had called a gay hotline, or gone to PFLAG, or found a friend he could trust?

I’m trying to think of a situation where being in the closet is the preferred alternative, but sorry—I can’t. And does it matter?

I think so—because saying that it might be better for some of us to stay in the closet empowers…

…the closet.